RIVERSIDE – Today, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. inaugurated carbonLITE’s 220,000 square foot plant in Riverside, California, the largest bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in the world. The plant will recycle more than two billion plastic bottles a year.
“Companies like carbonLITE are revolutionizing the recycling industry and dramatically reducing the huge amount of plastic dumped in California landfills every year,” said Governor Brown.
Governor Brown was joined at the ribbon-cutting ceremony by executives from PepsiCo and Nestlé Waters, along with representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Riverside County and the City of Riverside.
“We’re committed to being the leading bottle-to-bottle recycler, preserving resources and reducing the carbon footprint from PET bottle production,” said Leon Farahnik, carbonLITE’s chairman. “We’re honored to have the support of Governor Brown and U.S. EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld, among the many others who came out to our grand opening and experienced our state-of-the-art recycling facility.”
In October 2011, the Governor signed Assembly Bill 1149, which provided subsidies, known as “market development payments,” to manufacturers who use recycled plastic and to processors—such as carbonLITE—who fabricate it.
Today, most plastic bottles collected in California are exported to China, where they are used to make polyester for clothes and other commodities. carbonLITE takes Californians’ used plastic bottles and turns them back into bottles here in California, using a pellet technology that preserves natural resources and reduces landfill waste.